Sleeping with the Enemy
by KimK
Summary: There isn't one--but it does deal with the Diana Fowley shenanigans.


Title: Sleeping with the Enemy 

Author: KimK

Rating: PG

Keywords: Angst, implied future MSR

Spoilers: One Son

Summary: I don't have one . . . egads! It involves the Diana shenanigans.

Archive: Of course! Just let me know so I can visit.

Feedback: I guess . . . Psh, yes! Gotta have it. Not mine. I'm poor. Don't sue.

Thank you: Sara for being a terrific beta reader, a wonderful friend and for helping me find an ending for this! And, as always, thank you for reading.

Author's Notes: I was watching One Son the other day and a line that Mulder said, and the reaction that came of it, made me want to write this. He mentioned something to Kersh about how the syndicate had tried to sleep with the enemy, but it led to their demise (paraphrasing of course). But what really made me want to write this was, when he said that, he looked to Scully but she refused to make eye contact with him. This is my interpretation on why.

XxX

The walk to the bullpen was done in silence. It was five o'clock, so most of the staff had left for the evening. Quiet conversations could be heard from those who needed to fit in another ounce of gossip before shutting down. The loudest sound, however, was the clip-clop of Scully's heels as she walked ahead of Mulder to her desk.

She had refused to make eye contact with him all day, especially at the meeting with Kersh.

Turning the corner, Mulder watched Scully at her desk, her refusal to speak was killing him. Despite the most recent events, he thought she should be at least somewhat happy at this moment. From the sound of things, they had the X-Files back. Kersh, Skinner, Mulder and Scully were to meet in the morning to discuss the possibility.

The sound of static as Scully shut off her computer brought Mulder's attention solely on her again.

"Everything okay, Scully?"

"Yes," she answered succinctly, grabbing her coat from the back of her swivel chair.

He took a small step toward his desk, toward her. "Are you sure? You've been unusually quiet all day and acting almost as if . . . you're mad at me," he said quietly, cautiously.

For the first time today she looked up at him, a hazy yet wet look in her eyes. It was as though she were trying to keep from crying.

"I'm not mad, Mulder," the emotion lacing her throat with the statement.

In an attempt to avoid anything too emotional, Mulder changed the subject, adding a nod to at least let her know he heard her.

"So, we may get the X-Files back. That serves as a silver lining to all of this, don't you think?" He added a small smile to bring in some levity and made the final walk to his desk.

"Yeah, Mulder, it does," she agreed in almost a whisper, slipping her arms into her coat, a wan smile pulling at her lips.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the dark room before Scully finally made a move to exit.

"Goodnight, Mulder. I'll see you in the morning," she said over her shoulder, not looking back.

"Wait, wait. Hold it. Something is wrong and I want to know what it is. I know these deaths couldn't have gotten to you this bad, not after everything we've been through. I know you, Scully. It has to be something else. Something I've done, maybe? So what gives."

He had taken a few steps toward her from behind his desk, his hands resting on his hips as he waited for her answer. It took a moment, but she finally turned to him, her head bowed for a second before she squared her shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

"I thought you knew me too, Mulder."

Dumbfounded and beyond confused, Mulder just stood there, his mouth agape.

"I'm tired of playing games, Mulder," she started, sounding almost defeated. "I'm tired of you picking and choosing whose side I get to be on. Whether I'm the good guy or the bad guy. I've picked my side and it's yours, believe it or not. So the next time you start accusing people of sleeping with the enemy, I want you to stop, take a look in the mirror and give me some insight on whose side you're on," and with that she turned and left, not allowing him a word in defense.

What hit him the hardest was that she had said the entire thing in a whisper. No anger could be detected in any word she said.

Only hurt.

XxX

After a few minutes of sitting in her car in the garage, almost hoping Mulder would come after her, Scully went home.  
Tears threatened to cloud her vision, but she refused to let them.

When she reached home, she immediately changed into jeans and a tee-shirt, her feet clad in white socks. She considered taking a hot bath to soothe her muscles while listening to Vivaldi; shutting the world out for half an hour, but opted to do the dishes instead. Relaxing was out of the question right now anyway, no matter how much ylang ylang and jasmine she poured into two feet of water.

Filling the sink with water and squeezing in the required amount of Dawn, Scully stared at the wall in front of her,  
thinking.

Was he really that dense? She wondered. Could he really not possibly see the distance that had stretched between them since she had stormed out of the Gunmen's lair?

She shut off the water and reached for a wash cloth, a knock on the door interrupting the retrieval. Sighing, Scully wiped her hands dry, notwithstanding the fact they had yet to touch the water, and padded to her door. She glanced through the peephole, her heart speeding up once she realized who it was. Sighing once more, she cleared her throat and opened the door.

"What was that?" Mulder practically demanded, not bothering with a hello and certainly not allowing her to invite him in, for he pushed his way through as if he owned the place.

Scully's eyes widened at the unexpected intrusion, but she let it slide and shut the door, pausing a moment before she turned to look at him again.

Apparently the few seconds of silence was unacceptable, because Mulder felt the need to ask the question again, his jaw clenched. "What was that, Scully?"

He knew he shouldn't be angry, or at least, he knew he shouldn't be showing his anger. After all, he had asked her to tell him what was wrong. And she had been hurt. Her words hurt, but they were not said in anger, only pain. He needed to remember the look he'd seen in her eyes before he said another word to her.

Taking a deep breath and mentally counting to ten, he ran a hand haphazardly through his hair before pressing on. His eyes had fallen to look at his shoes just briefly and when he looked up, he saw that Scully was making her way back to her kitchen. He was about to follow her when he realized she had just walked in there to turn off the light.

"Mulder, I've said all I want to say for now, okay?" She informed him, collected. Her voice was eerily calm and he knew it was all an act.

"No, Scully, I want to settle this once and for all. I don't understand where all of this is coming from."

Okay, maybe he was that dense. Or maybe he was just in denial. Either way, it infuriated her to no end.

"You don't under-" she started. "Mulder, do you have any idea how you made me feel when you disregarded the facts I laid in front of you about Diana Fowley? How humiliating it was for the Gunmen to witness you rip the trust I thought you had in me to shreds"

"I went to look for evidence to back-up everything you had said about her! Doesn't that account for anything?"

Did he think that would fix everything? Saying that only made the problem worse. It only made it more obvious that he didn't trust her half as much as he had claimed so long ago.

"God, Mulder, you don't get it do you? You shouldn't have had to look for anything. Since when did my word lose its credibility? Since when did you have to find a reason to believe me? When it involves cases and theories that is one thing. But when it involves us . . ." Stumbling with her words, she gathered herself before continuing. "I just thought, after all these years, my word would be enough. I guess I was wrong. I guess I am the bad guy in all of this."

He didn't know what to say because . . . she was right. She shouldn't have to prove herself to him. Hadn't she done that a thousand times already?

"I'm sorry, Sc-"

"Sorry isn't going to cut it this time, Mulder," she interrupted. "You have no idea how that made me feel. No idea."

She was right again, he didn't. But before he could voice that very thought, she continued.

"I want you to imagine for just a moment, just one moment, what it would be like for someone to lose trust in you like that. For me to lose trust in you like that. And then I want you to recognize that imagining that betrayal doesn't even measure up to the reality."

Once again her voice was eerily quiet as she said this. He almost wished she would yell at him instead of standing there, unmoving, admonishing him with whispers.

"I don't care about your past with Diana. I don't. I don't care what you had or what you still may have," she added.

The last words caught his attention in a different way. Therefore he broke in before she went on.

"Scully, you don't honestly think that Diana and I are . . . that we . . . because that is far from the truth. Sure we had our thing way back in the day, but that was a long time ago." It was then that he realized that lately he hadn't given Scully a reason to believe that nothing was going on between Diana and him.

"Mulder, I don't care," she almost shouted. He was almost comforted that she had raised her voice, but then he realized that she had, in fact, raised her voice and he wanted to run for cover.

"It seems to me like you care a great deal," was what escaped his lips instead. He almost regretted the comment.

"The only thing I care about is that ever since she got here you have been a completely different person toward me and entirely antagonistic. You don't talk to me like I'm your partner, hell, you don't even talk to me like you even like me all that much. So don't pin this all on jealously or, or me trying to pry into your past, Mulder. I'm sick of telling you the same thing over and over again and you looking at me like I have lost my mind."

"But, Scully, I don't want you to draw these conclusions that " He didn't get a chance to finish.

"What am I to you, Mulder?"

The air was pregnant with unspoken words.

Scully stared him down, trying to gauge whatever it was he was thinking, but his mind was so clouded with thoughts that he wasn't even sure what he was thinking. The color that had risen in her cheeks suddenly faded and she was now so white it made her transparent. Or it at least made how broken she felt by his absence of words completely visible behind her warrior facade.

Mulder was panicking. Maybe it didn't show so much on the outside, but his blood was boiling and his ears were ringing and although his eyes remained fixed on Scully, frozen in shock, he was still somehow looking for a way to escape.

She sighed, the sound escaping her lips in a whoosh and her eyes closing with the exhale. Her shoulders fell in defeat and she reached a hand up to dry wash her face.

"Please go home, Mulder." She reached for the doorknob, already turning it to show him out the door.

Then somehow, obviously by divine intervention, his mouth welcomed words.

"No, Scully, wait. It's not that I don't know what to say, per se, I just . . . I'm torn between what I want to say and what I should say." His hand had come up to her shoulder, halting her movement to open the door.

"Just tell me the truth."

He shuffled his feet nervously, clearing his throat as though to better prepare himself. He smiled the smallest of smiles,  
in a sense hoping it would make the words come easier. Her eyes were pleading yet demanding that he not lie to her. So he didn't.

"I don't know how to put into words . . ." he started, a laugh escaping his lips. He was laughing at the fact that the English language had chose this moment to desert him. He took one step closer, breathing her in, and was pleased that she made no move to step away. "To put it simply, you're everything to me, Scully. Essential to my life, to who I am and who I have and could become. I know there have been few times that I have expressed what you have come to mean to me, but I never meant for you to think I didn't mean any of it. I meant every word. I do love you, Scully. If can believe one thing I have ever said, believe that," was what finally spilled from his lips.

Mulder brushed his thumb over her shoulder before dropping his arm to his side. He shrugged, as though saying 'that's all I've got.'

Scully's hand left the door knob and her head sagged. She worried her lip for a moment, allowing his words to sink in. They were touching and she knew he meant every word. The sad thing was it cut into her to hear him say these things after the way he had treated her.

"Then help me understand, Mulder. Help me understand why, when Diana Fowley is around, I'm the odd man out. Is it just easier to work with her because she follows without question? Do you feel as though you owe her? I'm not trying to be difficult, I just want to stop feeling this way and I can't unless you make me understand."

"I guess I do feel as though I owe her in a sense. She was a good partner way back when. And, I guess, I also didn't want to face the possibility that she really had crossed over." He paused, thinking. He wanted Scully to understand that, in the end, he would choose her. He would choose her to work with and to love.

"I've had five important women in my life, Scully. All of which changed my life one way or another. There's my mother, Samantha, Phoebe, Diana and you. I've lost four of them in some way. Samantha being taken, therefore making my mother a woman I hardly know. You know the story behind Phoebe and Diana. I don't handle loss too well, Scully. With Mom and Samantha, it hurts, but I carry on. Eventually I got over Phoebe and Diana. But with you, God, what I felt for them was microscopic compared to my feelings for you. These feelings overwhelm me, Scully, and sometimes I just have to step back to get perspective. I've almost lost you more times than I care to think about and each time I wasn't sure if I could live with the thought of never seeing you again. If I could live at all." He reached down and clasped Scully's hand in his, searching her eyes.

"Scully, I can't lose you now. I know a few words are not going to solve everything that is wrong between us or make you forget the way I treated you, but could we try to take a step to move passed this?"

"I hope so, Mulder. I really hope we can . . . I can."

Mulder smiled, not so much a triumphant smile, but one more of understanding. He squeezed her hand then released it.

"I think I better go now, Scully. See you in the morning?" He sounded almost doubtful.

"Count on it, partner. I wouldn't miss it for the world," she said, offering a smile of her own.

The smile spoke volumes, but most importantly it meant that she was willing to try anew. It was all he could expect for now.

The End

Notes:  
Believe it or not, I don't plan to write another fic concerning Diana issues for quite some time after this. Don't keel over from the shock. I think I have pretty much said what I want to say. Given that Mr. Car-ter never, ever resolved anything concerning the triangle of Diana, Mulder and Scully, well, you can blame him for this obsession that I have held onto for dear life all these years. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this interpretation. I'll be waiting patiently for your feedback. Love!


End file.
